Quote of the Day: Horace Engdahl

The winner of the Nobel Prize for literature has been announced, and it is not an American. No, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy made sure the world knew why:

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States.

"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

The last American to win the award was Toni Morrison in 1993.